Ukraine

Negotiators from Russia and the United States have met in the US city of Miami as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Washington to ramp up the pressure on Moscow to end its war on Ukraine.

The meeting on Saturday took place between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Dmitriev told the reporters the talks were positive and would continue on Sunday.

“The discussions are proceeding constructively,” said Dmitriev. “They began earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow.”

Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said that he may also join the talks in Miami. He said that progress has been made in discussions to end the war, but there is still a way to go.

“The role we’re trying to play is a role of figuring out whether there’s any overlap here that they can agree to, and that’s what we’ve invested a lot of time and energy [on], and continue to do so,” Rubio said. “That may not be possible. I hope it is. I hope it can get done this month, before the end of the year.”

Trump’s envoys have for weeks been negotiating a 20-point peace plan with Ukrainian, Russian and European officials.

While US ​officials say they have made progress, major differences remain on the issues of territory and possible security guarantees that Kyiv says are essential for any agreement.

Russia has shown few signs that it is willing to give up its expansive territorial demands in Ukraine, which it believes it is well-positioned to secure as the war grinds on and political fractures emerge among Ukraine’s European allies.

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy said he remains supportive of a US-led negotiations process, but that diplomacy needs to be accompanied by greater pressure on Russia.

“America must clearly say, if not diplomacy, then there will be full pressure… Putin does not yet feel the kind of pressure that should exist,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader said Washington has also proposed a new format for talks with Russia, comprised of three-way talks at the level of national security advisers from Ukraine, Russia, and the US.

Zelenskyy expressed scepticism that the talks would result in “anything new”, but said he would support trilateral discussions if they led to progress in areas such as prisoner swaps or a meeting of national leaders.

“If such a ‍meeting could be ⁠held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war, or if a meeting of national security advisers achieves agreement on a leaders’ meeting… I cannot be opposed. We would support such a US proposal. Let’s see how things go,” he said.

The last time Ukrainian and Russian envoys held official direct talks was in July in Istanbul, which led to prisoner swaps but little else.

The talks in Miami come after Putin promised to press ahead with his military offensive in Ukraine, hailing Moscow’s battlefield gains in an annual news conference on Friday.

Putin, however, suggested that Russia could pause its devastating strikes on the country to allow Ukraine to hold a presidential ballot, a prospect that Zelenskyy rejected.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Ukraine’s Black Sea Odesa region from an overnight Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure rose to eight, with 30 people wounded.

A civilian bus was struck in the attack, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

The Russian attacks on the coastline region have wrought havoc in recent weeks, hitting bridges and cutting electricity and heating for hundreds of thousands in freezing temperatures.

Moscow earlier said it would expand strikes on Ukrainian ports as retaliation for targeting its sanctions-busting oil tankers.

On Saturday, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two Russian fighter jets at an airfield in Moscow-occupied Crimea, according to the security service SBU. Kyiv’s army said it struck a Russian oil rig in the Caspian Sea as well as a patrol ship nearby.

Putin described Russia’s initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” to “demilitarise” the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.

Kyiv and its European allies say the war, the largest and deadliest on European soil since World War II, is an unprovoked and illegal land grab that has resulted in a tidal wave of violence and destruction.

Here is where things stand on Sunday, December 21:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s port city of Odesa rose from seven to eight, with at least 30 others wounded, according to Ukrainian authorities.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in Odesa as “harsh” and accused Russia of trying to block Kyiv’s access to the Black Sea.
• The Ukrainian leader also said that he is looking to replace the head of the Southern Air Command, Dmytro Karpenko, over the Russian strikes on Odesa.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russian forces also attacked the nearby port of Pivdennyi on Saturday, hitting several reservoirs.
• Ukraine’s military said its special forces carried out a drone attack on a Lukoil oil rig in the Caspian Sea on Friday, along with the Russian military patrol ship Okhotnik. The military also said that the Filanovsky oil rig, which had been targeted twice this month, was damaged in the strike.
• The Ukrainian military also said it destroyed two Russian fighter jets at an airfield in the occupied Crimean peninsula.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces took control of the villages of Svitle and Vysoke, located in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and the northeastern Luhansk region, respectively.

Diplomacy and ceasefire talks

• Zelenskyy said the United States proposed a new format for talks with Russia, comprised of three-way talks at the level of national security advisers from Ukraine, Russia, and the US.
• The Ukrainian leader expressed scepticism that the talks would result in “anything new”, but added that he believes that US-led talks have the best chance of success.
• He added that he would support trilateral discussions if they led to progress in areas such as prisoner swaps or a meeting of national leaders. “If such a ‍meeting could be ⁠held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war, or if a meeting of national security advisers achieves agreement on a leaders’ meeting… I cannot be opposed. We would support such a US proposal. Let’s see how things go,” he said.
• Zelenskyy also pushed back against calls for Ukraine to hold elections as the war drags on, stating that voting cannot take place in Russian-occupied areas and that security conditions must first improve. “It is not [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who decides when and in what format the elections in Ukraine will take place,” Zelenskyy said.
• Zelenskyy urged European leaders to approve a measure to seize frozen Russian assets and use them to fund Ukraine’s war effort, saying that doing so will strengthen Ukraine’s leverage at the negotiating table. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that Ukraine will need about 137 billion euros ($161bn) in 2026 and 2027, as the demands of the war continue to strain the country’s economy.
• Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev held talks with his US counterpart, Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the city of Miami.
• “The ‌discussions are proceeding constructively. They began earlier and ‌will continue ⁠today, and will also continue tomorrow,” ‌Dmitriev said
• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov attended a summit in Cairo, held to advance closer cooperation between Russia and African nations, and attended by more than 50 countries. Lavrov pitched Russia as a “reliable partner” to African countries in areas such as security and national sovereignty.

Weapons

• Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksandr Kamyshin announced a deal with Portugal on the joint production of maritime drones, saying it would help “defend Europe from the sea”.

Dec. 20 (UPI) — Officials for the European Union have agreed to loan $105 billon to Ukraine to help it stay financially solvent over the next two years amid Russian attacks in the Odesa region.

The money is in lieu of an allocation to Ukraine from frozen Russian assets equal to nearly $246 billion and being held in Belgium, the BBC reported.

The funds are equal to about two-thirds of the amount that Ukraine will need to pay its bills and give it a stronger bargaining position as peace talks continue with the aim of ending the Ukraine War that started when Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022, according to The New York Times.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the loan is interest-free and only would be repaid if Russia were required to pay reparations to Ukraine.

News of the E.U. allocation comes after a Russian missile strike near Odesa that killed eight and injured 27 others on Friday night, CNN reported.

Russian missiles struck a port facility in Pivdenne, and some of those killed and wounded were on a bus that was struck during the attack.

The missile strikes were part of an ongoing aerial campaign against the Odesa region over the past nine days and caused a power outage in Odesa, which is located on the Black Sea and about 300 miles south of Kyiv.

Two bridges in southern and northern Odesa were knocked out in recent strikes and are being repaired.

Russian forces also are targeting the energy infrastructure in Ukraine and have used drones and missiles to damage or destroy many targets in recent months.

A Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port in the south has killed at least eight people and wounded 27, as Moscow intensifies attacks on the strategic Black Sea region and talks to end the war remain in a critical stage.

The attack late on Friday hit critical logistics infrastructure, with some of the wounded trapped on a bus at the strike’s epicentre as trucks caught fire in a car park.

Ukrainian officials say the bombardment is part of a sustained Russian campaign against Odesa’s civilian infrastructure that has left more than two million people without electricity, water and heating for days amid freezing temperatures in the war’s fourth punishing winter.

Moscow struck the same port again on Saturday, hitting reservoirs in what Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba described as deliberately targeting civilian logistics routes.

The escalation comes as both sides trade blows across multiple fronts, while United States-led negotiations and numerous high-level meetings in Europe to end the war lumber on without a breakthrough.

Russia claimed on Saturday to have seized the villages of Svitle in the eastern Donetsk region and Vysoke in the northeastern Sumy region, though the reports could not be independently verified.

Ukraine has responded with a widening campaign against Russian military and energy assets.

On Friday night, Ukrainian drones struck the Filanovsky oil rig belonging to Russian energy giant Lukoil in the Caspian Sea, along with a military patrol ship patrolling near the platform.

The attack marked the first officially acknowledged Ukrainian strike on Caspian drilling infrastructure, though the rig had been hit at least twice before in December.

Between December 14 and 15, Ukrainian forces used sea drones to strike a Russian Kilo-class submarine at the Novorossiysk Naval Base in the Black Sea, according to a United Kingdom Defence Intelligence assessment.

Miami talks

The attacks unfold as American and European officials gather in Miami for weekend talks aimed at ending the nearly four-year war, with Russian and Ukrainian teams also in attendance.

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on Saturday he was heading to Miami.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would not force Ukraine into any agreement, though he described the conflict as “not our war”.

Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are leading discussions with Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and officials from the UK, France and Germany. Russian representatives, including Kremlin key negotiator Dmitriev, are meeting separately with American officials.

The key obstacle remains territorial concessions, with reports suggesting Washington is pushing Kyiv to cede parts of the eastern Donetsk region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no signs of compromise at his annual choreographed news conference on Friday, pledging to press ahead with military operations and predicting new successes before the year’s end.

Putin’s remarks were the latest in a drumbeat of often-repeated maximalist Russian positions nearly four years after he ordered troops into the neighbouring country.

The issue of territory gained, lost, to be ceded or not, delves into the heart of the matter on one of the most contentious issues in the talks to end the war so far.

Putin has demanded Ukraine cede all territory in four key regions his forces have captured and occupied, along with Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

He also wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have not yet taken in the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting remains attritional – conditions Kyiv has rejected outright.

As talks continue, so does the fighting, with Russia controlling large parts of Ukraine’s eastern and Black Sea coastal regions.

Putin projected confidence on Friday about battlefield progress, saying Russian forces had “fully seized strategic initiative” and would make further gains before the year ends.

However, that narrative is on shaky ground this week, as Moscow’s assertion of inevitable victory flew in the face of facts on the ground.

Ukraine steadily took back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces within it, belying Russian claims to have seized it.

Russian forces were also unable to dislodge Ukrainian defenders from the eastern city of Pokrovsk in the eastern area of Donetsk to back up Moscow’s claims of total control.

Ukraine received a boost on Friday when European leaders agreed to provide a 90 billion euros ($105bn) loan to cover military and economic needs for the next two years.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met Polish President Karol Nawrocki in Warsaw the same day to reinforce regional unity against Russia, said the funds would go towards defence if the war continues or reconstruction if peace is achieved.

These are the key developments from day 1,395 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Saturday, 20 December :

Fighting

• Russian attacks targeting ports in Ukraine’s Odesa killed seven people and wounded 15, Governor Oleh Kiper said in a post on Telegram.
• Kiper described the attack as “massive” and said it involved Russian ballistic missiles, which targeted trucks that caught fire.
• The Kyiv Independent news outlet reported that Odesa city has been suffering from chronic power outages since December 13, due to earlier Russian attacks.
• Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s Dnipro region with artillery shelling and drones, damaging homes, power lines and a gas pipeline, Vladyslav Hayvanenko, acting head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, wrote on Facebook.
• Ukraine has taken back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces and unending Russian claims to have seized the key urban centre.

Aid

• European Union leaders agreed to provide a $105.5bn interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet the country’s military and economic needs for the next two years.
• EU leaders decided ‍to borrow cash on capital markets to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia, rather than use frozen Russian assets, diplomats said.

Diplomacy

• In his annual “results of the year” speech in Moscow on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to discuss giving up the Ukrainian Russia has seized, as part of truce negotiations.
• “We know from statements from Zelenskyy that he’s not prepared to discuss territory issues,” Putin said.
• The Russian president also attacked Europe’s handling of frozen Russian assets, labelling plans to use them to fund Ukraine as “robbery”, rather than theft, because it was being done openly.
• “Whatever they stole, they’ll have to give it back someday,” Putin said, pledging to pursue legal action in courts that he described as “independent of political decisions”.

Ceasefire talks

• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that progress has been made to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in a year-end address in Washington, DC.
• “I think we’ve made progress, but we have a ways to go, and obviously, the hardest issues are always the last issues,” Rubio told reporters.
• “We don’t see surrender any time in the near future, and only a negotiated settlement can end this war,” Rubio said, adding that any decision about ending the war will be up to Ukraine and Russia, and not the US.
• Top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov, who is in the US for ceasefire discussions, said the US and Kyiv had agreed to continue their joint efforts to reach a ceasefire.
• “We agreed with our American partners on further steps and on continuing our joint work in the near future,” Umerov wrote on Telegram, without providing further details. He added that he had informed Zelenskyy of the outcome of the talks.
• Putin’s special envoy, Kirill ‍ Dmitriev, is heading ‍to Miami for a meeting with Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a Russian source told Reuters.
• The meeting in Miami this weekend comes after Witkoff and Kushner held talks in Berlin with Ukrainian and European officials earlier this week to try to reach a deal to ​end the war.
• The Russian source said that any meeting between Dmitriev and Ukrainian negotiators currently in the US had been ruled out.

Regional Security

• Turkiye’s Ministry of the Interior said that it found a Russian-made reconnaissance drone in the İzmit district of Kocaeli, in northwestern Turkiye, based on “initial findings” from an ongoing investigation.
• An “unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) believed to be of the Russian-made Orlan-10 type, used for reconnaissance and surveillance, was found,” the ministry said in a post on X.
• Turkiye’s Ministry of National Defence said on Monday that it had shot down a drone over the Black Sea as it approached Turkish airspace, according to local reports, without providing further details.
• Ukraine’s Ukrinform news site reported on Friday that after the drone was shot down, Turkiye had informed both Kyiv and Moscow “of the need to act cautiously” so as not to “negatively affect security in the Black Sea”.

The war on Ukraine was a big topic at Vladimir Putin’s annual televised question and answer session, but the Russian president wouldn’t say if the war is coming to an end.

In a significant escalation of the ‘tanker war’ between Russia and Ukraine, which has so far played out mainly in the Black Sea, Ukrainian aerial drones have struck a tanker belonging to Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’ in the Mediterranean. The latest incident comes after a tit-for-tat series of attacks, and a warning earlier this month from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would “cut Ukraine off from the sea” in response to Kyiv stepping up its campaign against Russian commercial shipping. 

A source from within the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the government’s main internal security agency, told TWZ that “a new, unprecedented special operation” was carried out “more than 2,000 kilometers” (1,243 miles) from Ukrainian territory.

The target was the Oman-flagged crude oil tanker Qendil, empty at the time of the attack and sailing from the Indian port of Jamnagar, where it had been unloaded on December 1.

“Accordingly, this attack did not pose any threat to the ecological situation in the region,” the SBU said.

Before unloading, the tanker had left Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk on November 4, sailing through the Bosphorus and Mediterranean, then passing the Suez Canal en route to India. The vessel was built in 2006 and has a capacity of 115,338 deadweight tonnes.

According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence vessel tracking, the attack likely occurred when the tanker was heading west in the Mediterranean between Malta and Crete, which would put it around 930 miles from Ukraine. According to AIS data, the vessel made a U-turn immediately before midnight and then turned toward the east, for unknown reasons, changing its destination to Port Said in Egypt.

The SBU explained that aerial drones were used as part of a “multi-stage” operation that was conducted by forces from its Special Group “Alpha.” The same group was responsible for yesterday’s aerial drone attack on Belbek Air Base in Crimea, which you can read more about here.

The SBU shared a video with us that purports to show the attack on the tanker. Here, munitions can be seen dropped onto the deck from a hexacopter-type aerial drone, indicating a short-range attack, with ‘bomber drones’ likely having been launched from a nearby vessel. The launch of these drones from a neighboring country would only be possible if the target was half a dozen or so miles off the coast.

The SBU claims that the tanker “suffered critical damage and cannot be used for its intended purpose.” The video evidence suggests that damage was inflicted on the tanker’s topside infrastructure, although it’s unclear how severe this was.

“Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and earn money that went to the war against Ukraine,” the agency added in a statement. “Therefore, from the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target for the SBU. The enemy must understand that Ukraine will not stop and will strike it anywhere in the world, wherever it may be.”

In a statement, the security firm Vanguard said that the attack reflected “a stark expansion of Ukraine’s use of uncrewed aerial systems against maritime assets associated with Russia’s sanctioned oil export network.”

The EU and the United Kingdom sanction Qendil, since it is considered part of the shadow fleet, a term for vessels used by Russia (as well as by Iran and Venezuela) to evade sanctions with deceptive practices. These include changing flags and complex chains of ownership, often using shell companies.

It might not be a coincidence that the attack took place on the day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual end-of-year press conference. During this, Putin said that Russia would respond to recent Ukrainian attacks on shadow fleet tankers.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has relied heavily on the shadow fleet, estimated to number more than 1,000 ships, to circumvent sanctions and export crude oil, bringing much-needed revenue.

Putin said today that Russia would “definitely respond” to Ukraine’s campaign against its shadow fleet. “Ultimately, this will not lead to the expected result,” he said. “It will not disrupt any supplies, but will only create additional threats,” Putin added.

Ukraine has previously used drone strikes to target Russian shadow tankers in the Black Sea.

As we have previously reported, Ukraine carried out three attacks on Russian-connected oil tankers in the Black Sea in late November and early December. This campaign has drawn a response in kind from Russia, using a Shahed-type drone, as you can read about here.

Ukraine’s SBU security service says its Sea Baby naval drones today struck another Russian “shadow fleet” tanker in the Black Sea.

Video from an SBU source purports to show the oil tanker “Dashan” being hit by the attack drone and explosions in the stern area. “The vessel,… pic.twitter.com/mtfBqYe1gQ

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) December 10, 2025

However, the first confirmed Ukrainian strike on a Russian-linked vessel this far from the Black Sea theater is a significant development. It is highly likely that the clandestine anti-ship war waged between Iran and Israel — something we have reported on for years now —likely provided a template for this.

The ability to use short-range drones to prosecute attacks in the Mediterranean indicates that vessels could be under threat elsewhere in European waters or even beyond. Beyond that, we could see Ukraine start to use longer-range systems, including one-way attack drones equipped with Starlink terminals, in the future.

Regardless, this development not only makes it potentially harder for Russia to export oil but also means that other commercial shipping will have to be aware of the increasing risks and potentially take measures to enhance their protection.

While the attack on Qendil appears to be the first of its kind in the Mediterranean, a further geographical expansion of Kyiv’s campaign against the Russian shadow fleet should not be ruled out.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Dec. 19 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was determined to continue the war in Ukraine until his conditions are met, which include taking Ukrainian territory.

Putin spoke at his annual press conference and touted Russia’s recent gains in the region.

“The strategic initiative is completely in the hands of the Russian forces,” Putin said. He added that Russia is “ready to end the conflict peacefully” if Ukraine cedes large areas of its eastern territories.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine won’t give up its land, which is set by the country’s constitution.

Russia has also demanded that Ukraine give up its bid to join NATO and said that if NATO members sent troops, Russia would view them as “legitimate targets.”

“The ball is entirely in the court of our Western opponents,” he said, adding that Russia had agreed to compromises proposed by the United States in its peace plan negotiated by the President Donald Trump administration.

Earlier this week, Zelensky was asked if Kyiv would give up its attempts to join NATO. He said Ukraine’s “position remains unchanged.”

“The United States don’t see us in NATO, for now,” he said. “Politicians change.”

European leaders have agreed to continue funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia with a two-year, $105 billion loan for munitions in the ongoing war.

European leaders couldn’t agree on their first choice to arm Ukraine using frozen Russian state assets to back the loan.

The plan to use frozen Russian assets fell apart in the final moments after Belgium pushed back, fearful that it would be at legal and financial risk. The bank holding the assets is in Belgium, and Russia has sued to block the plan.

European leaders announced Thursday that they will instead use money from the EU budget. The new plan could be more costly and difficult to mobilize.

Ukrainian military successes and Russian narratives clashed this week, as Moscow’s assertion of inevitable victory flew in the face of facts on the ground.

Ukraine steadily took back control of almost all of its northern city of Kupiansk after isolating Russian forces within it, belying Russian claims to have seized it.

Russian forces were also unable to dislodge Ukrainian defenders from the eastern city of Pokrovsk to back up Moscow’s claims of total control.

And Moscow attempted to deny Ukraine’s successful use of an underwater unmanned vehicle to severely damage a Kilo-class submarine, despite visual evidence.

Ukrainian forces operating in the northern Kharkiv region said they had cut Russian logistics to Kupiansk, surrounded a vanguard of 200 Russians inside it, and cleared Russian forces out of forests north of the city on December 12.

Geolocated footage showed Ukrainian forces advancing in the city the following day and taking back the southern suburb of Yuvileynyi, pushing Russian troops to the northern and western suburbs.

The Russian position had become more precarious by Monday. Ukrainian forces said they prevented reinforcements from entering the city through a gas pipeline, a tactic Russia had used in the siege of Chasiv Yar, and the isolated Russian troops were being supplied solely by drone. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces were still repelling Russian attacks on Friday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence insisted it had control of the situation. “Units of the Zapad Group of Forces exercise reliable control over all districts of liberated Kupiansk,” it said on Monday, claiming that Ukraine’s efforts to enter the city from the south were being suppressed.

“The only thing that can be said for sure is that the Russian Armed Forces are still holding part of the centre and north of Kupiansk, but most of it is already either in the grey zone or under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” wrote a Russian military reporter on the Telegram messaging app.

On Wednesday this week, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii, Ukraine’s Army commander-in-chief, told a Ramstein-format of Ukraine’s allies that his forces had taken back 90 percent of Kupiansk. At the same time in Moscow, Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov was telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that “the enemy is unsuccessfully trying to regain” the city.

“The Russian Defense Minister, Belousov, continues to lie that Russia controls Kupiansk,” wrote Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, on Telegram. “In reality, most of the city is controlled by the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which are continuing to clear it of Russians. However, all of Putin’s officials, from [commander-in-chief Valery] Gerasimov, who was the first to lie about controlling the city, to Belousov, continue to lie in the presence of Putin himself.”

Contrary to the available evidence, Belousov also insisted that Russia had seized Pokrovsk, which Russia calls Krasnoarmeysk, and was on the cusp of vanquishing neighbouring Myrnohrad, which Russia calls Dimitrov. Both towns are in the eastern Donetsk region, and are almost surrounded by Russian forces to the north, south and east.

“Russian soldiers continue to inflict fire damage on Ukrainian troops in Dimitrov, the last stronghold of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Krasnoarmeysk agglomeration,” Belousov told Putin.

But Syrskii told allies that Ukrainian forces had regained about 16 square kilometres (6 square miles) in the northern part of Pokrovsk and 56sq km (22sq miles) west of the city. “Logistics in Myrnograd are complex, but the operations continue,” he wrote.

Russia had claimed complete control over Pokrovsk on December 2 and was sticking to its story.

Submarine and oil refinery explosions

A third point of contention was Ukraine’s successful use of an underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV) to strike a Russian Kilo-class submarine on Monday (December 15), in what is considered the first such attack in military history.

Video of the Russian fleet at anchor in the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea shows a huge explosion in the stern section of the submarine.

Ukraine’s State Security Service later claimed credit for the attack.

However, Russia’s Defence Ministry said: “Not a single ship or submarine as well as the crews of the Black Sea Fleet stationed in the bay of the Novorossiysk naval base were damaged as a result of the sabotage.”

The ministry published footage of what it said was the attacked submarine, in which it appeared undamaged above the surface, but the video did not show the stern section.

Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russia scored other successes, on which Russia did not comment.

Ukraine struck the oil refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, on December 12. On Sunday, Ukrainian drones struck the Afipsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai and the Uryupinsk oil depot in Volgograd, causing explosions in both locations. They also struck the Dorogobuzhskaya power plant in Smolensk.

United States and Ukrainian negotiating teams met for two days in Berlin on Sunday and Monday. Russian officials said they would be briefed next week on the results of those talks.

But even as it claimed to be interested in ongoing peace negotiations, Russia clearly signalled that it plans to continue aggressive operations next year.

“The key task for the next year is to maintain and increase the pace of the offensive,” said Belousov in Putin’s presence on Wednesday, at an expanded meeting of the Defence Ministry Board.

“It wasn’t us who started the war in 2022; it was the destructive forces in Ukraine, with the support of the West – essentially, the West itself that unleashed this war,” Putin said. “We are only trying to finish it, to put an end to it.”

Putin said “the goals of the special military operation will certainly be achieved,” and “Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means,” suggesting there was little room for compromise on Moscow’s side.

Putin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov signalled the same thing in an interview with ABC on Tuesday. He said Europe and Ukraine expected a “deep and very wrong” revision of Russian peace proposals, and ruled out conceding seized Ukrainian land.

“We are not able in any form to compromise on this, because it would be, in our view, a revision of a very fundamental element of our statehood, set forth through our constitution,” Naryshkin said.

Russian losses outpace recruitments

Russia has attempted to give the impression that it has inexhaustible manpower with which to prosecute the war it started in Ukraine.

Belousov said almost 410,000 Russians volunteered for military service, exceeding expectations for 2025.

That translates to 32,800 per month. “Data from the Ukrainian General Staff on Russian losses indicate that Russian forces suffered an average of 34,600 casualties per month between January and November 2025 – suggesting that Belousov’s recruitment numbers are not quite replacing Russian losses,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested most of these casualties were deaths. “[Putin] spends around 30,000 soldiers’ lives on the front every month. Not wounded – 30,000 killed each month… We have drone footage confirming these deaths,” he told Dutch parliamentarians.

Syrski also doubted Russian recruitment quotas were sufficient.

“The number of Russian troops has long been around 710,000,” he wrote on Telegram. “However, the enemy has not been able to increase this figure, despite active recruitment in Russia, because our soldiers are ‘reducing’ the number of occupiers by a thousand every day through deaths and injuries.”

Russian leader underscores Kremlin’s hardline stance on peace talks as Trump pushes for deal to end war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at his highly choreographed annual question-and-answer session in Moscow, has said his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy refuses to discuss territorial concessions.

The comments were made on Friday during the “Results of the Year” event, where Putin fielded questions from millions of Russians on topics ranging from domestic policy to the war.

Putin’s remarks are the latest in a drumbeat of often-repeated maximalist Russian positions nearly four years after he ordered troops into the neighbouring country, as United States President Donald Trump intensifies diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv.

The issue of territory gained, lost, to be ceded or not, delves into the heart of the matter on one of the most contentious issues in the talks to end the war so far.

“We know from statements from Zelenskyy that he’s not prepared to discuss territory issues,” Putin told attendees at the event in the capital’s Gostiny Dvor exhibition hall. Zelenskyy has indeed stated that clearly, but Ukraine’s constitution also forbids the ceding of land.

Putin has demanded Ukraine cede all territory in four key regions his forces have captured and occupied, along with Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

He also wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have not yet taken in the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting remains attritional – conditions Kyiv has rejected outright.

Putin projected confidence about battlefield progress, saying Russian forces had “fully seized strategic initiative” and would make further gains before the year ends.

Moscow’s larger army has made steady advances in recent months, seizing between 12 and 17 square kilometres (4.5 and 6.6 square miles) daily in 2025, according to Western assessments.

The Russian president also attacked Western handling of frozen Russian assets, labelling plans to use them for Ukraine as “robbery” rather than theft because it was being done openly.

“Whatever they stole, they’ll have to give it back someday,” he said, pledging to pursue legal action in courts he described as “independent of political decisions”.

European Union leaders agreed to provide a hefty $105bn interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs in its war with Russia for the next two years, EU Council President Antonio Costa said.

The leaders decided early on Friday ‍to borrow cash on capital markets to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia rather than use frozen Russian assets, diplomats said.

The annual event, which Putin has held in different formats since 2001, drew about three million questions from Russians via phone, text and online platforms. An artificial intelligence system processed the queries to identify common themes.

Putin’s comments come at a pivotal moment, and are watched closely by Western officials who will want to get a read on how he intends to present the situation on the ground to the Russian public.

Trump has launched a major diplomatic push to end nearly four years of fighting, but negotiations have stalled over sharply conflicting demands from Moscow and Kyiv.

US officials estimate that Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than two million casualties since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022. Neither side discloses reliable loss figures.

Dec. 18 (UPI) — European leaders have agreed to continue funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia with a two-year, $105 billion loan to provide the embattled nation with munitions and other material in the ongoing war, the latest battle of which has dragged on since 2022.

European leaders failed to agree on the first choice to arm Ukraine, using frozen Russian state assets as backing for the loan.

The plan to use frozen Russian assets to back the loan fell apart in the final moments, a schism that risked making the EU appear indecisive at a critical moment in negotiations.

European leaders announced Thursday that they will instead use money from the EU budget to fund Ukraine’s defense effort. As a result, the backup plan could be more costly and difficult to mobilize than the original plan to leverage the stash of Russian money currently frozen in Europe.

European leaders said since the end result is the same, getting funds to Kyiv, they celebrated it as a victory.

“This will address the urgent financial needs of Ukraine,” Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, said at a media briefing in Brussels.

Partly because of a cut in funding from the United States, Ukraine is facing a $160 billion shortfall over the next two years, according to forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The EU sought to fill about $105 billion of that gap.

Costa added that the EU will reserve its right to use frozen Russian assets for continued funding in the future.

These are the key developments from day 1,394 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Friday, December 19:

Fighting

• Three people, including two crew members of a cargo vessel, were killed in overnight Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian port of Rostov-on-Don and the town of Bataysk in the country’s southern Rostov region, local governor Yury Slyusar said.
• Russian strikes near Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa killed a woman in her car and hit infrastructure. Odesa’s Governor Oleh Kiper said a Russian drone killed a woman crossing a bridge in her car, and three children were injured in the incident.
• Kiper also asked residents whose homes have been affected by extended power outages to be patient and to end blocking roads in protest against the blackouts.
• “As a result of enemy attacks, the energy infrastructure in Odesa region has suffered extensive damage,” Kiper said.
• About 180,000 consumers have been left without electricity across five Ukrainian regions after Russian attacks, Ukraine’s acting energy minister, Artem Nekrasov, said.
• Nekrasov said the southern regions of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, the central regions of Cherkasy and Dnipropetrovsk, and the northeastern region of Sumy have been impacted.
• Russia has formed a military brigade equipped with Moscow’s new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile, Russian chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said.
• Russia fired the Oreshnik at Ukraine for the first time in November 2024, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted that the missile is impossible to intercept and has destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon.

Sanctions

• European Union leaders have agreed in principle at a summit in Brussels to work on financing Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 through the use of frozen Russian assets rather than EU borrowing, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
• EU leaders were still trying to overcome differences over the plan, with talks in Brussels focused on seeking to reassure Belgium, which holds most of the frozen assets, and other concerned countries, that Europe would share the legal and financial risks resulting from the initiative.
• A new draft of the deal offered Belgium and other countries unlimited guarantees for damages should Moscow successfully sue them for using Russian assets to finance Ukraine.
• Diplomats said the deal could be a problem for some governments, who would need parliamentary approval. The new draft also offered EU countries and institutions, whose assets may be seized by Russia in retaliation, the possibility to offset such damages against Russian assets held by the EU.
• The text of the draft deal also offered a mechanism of unconditional, irrevocable, on-demand guarantees that the EU would swiftly repay the Russian central bank assets in all circumstances should the need arise.
• Russia’s central bank has said it will extend legal action beyond its lawsuit against Belgium-based depository Euroclear and sue European banks in a Russian court over attempts the EU’s plans to use frozen Russian assets as loans for Kyiv.
• Britain has imposed more sanctions targeting Russian oil companies, including 24 individuals and entities, in what it described as a move against Russia’s largest remaining unsanctioned oil companies: Tatneft, Russneft, NNK-Oil and Rusneftegaz.

Peace talks

• Ukrainian peace negotiators are en route to the United States and plan to meet Washington’s negotiating team on Friday and Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
• US President Donald Trump said he believes talks to end the war in Ukraine are “getting close to something” as Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner plan to meet a Russian delegation in Miami this weekend.

Aid

• The Ukraine-US reconstruction fund, established as part of a Trump-pushed minerals deal the two countries signed in April, has approved its asset policies and is poised to begin reviewing its first investment opportunities in 2026, the US body overseeing the fund said.
• The Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said the fund’s second meeting “reached final consensus necessary to bring the fund to full operational status”. Potential deals could focus on critical minerals extraction and energy development as well as on maritime infrastructure, the DFC said.
• Ukraine is facing a foreign aid shortfall of 45-50 billion euros ($53-$59bn) in 2026, President Zelenskyy said, adding that if Kyiv did not receive a first tranche of a loan secured by Russian assets by next spring, it would have to cut drone production.
• Ukraine has clinched a long-awaited deal to restructure $2.6bn of growth-linked debt, with creditors overwhelmingly accepting a bonds-and-cash swap offer – a key step for the country to emerge from the sovereign default it suffered in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Politics and diplomacy

• President Zelenskyy said he saw no need to change Ukraine’s constitution enshrining its aim to become a NATO member state. A block on Ukraine joining the military alliance has been a core Russian demand to end its war.
• “To be honest, I don’t think we need to change our country’s constitution,” Zelenskyy said. “Certainly not because of calls from the Russian Federation or anyone else,” he said.
• Earlier this week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine could compromise on NATO membership if given bilateral security guarantees with protections similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member as an attack against all.
• Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya met Chinese foreign ministerial aide Liu Bin in Beijing, where the pair “discussed ways to strengthen trade and economic cooperation, and issues of co-operation within international organisations”, the Foreign Ministry said.

Russian affairs

• Sergei Yeremeyev, a Belarusian man accused by Russia of blowing up two trains in Siberia for Ukraine, has been jailed for 22 years. Yeremeyev was found guilty of carrying out an act of terrorism and of planting explosives on two freight trains in 2023.
• British man Hayden Davies, who fought for Ukraine against Russia, has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison camp after being convicted of being a paid mercenary, Russian prosecutors said. The 30-year-old was tried by a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk.

In the quiet village of Kozubivka in Ukraine’s Poltava region, Nelia and her husband Oleksandr open their home to people displaced from Kharkiv, where bombing and shelling have forced thousands to flee.

But rebuilding a life in rural Ukraine is not easy. City people must learn to navigate unfamiliar routines on the farm, endure physical labour and bear the emotional weight of displacement. In the process tempers flare despite moments of tenderness.

Through these intimate encounters, Guests from Kharkiv reveals what it means to create community in the middle of a war and the courage it takes to adapt to a new way of life.

A documentary short by Halyna Lavrinets, produced by Eleron Pictures.

A Briton who fought in Ukraine has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security prison, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office has said.

Hayden Davies, a former British soldier who Russia has called a mercenary, was reportedly captured in Ukraine’s Donbas region in late 2024 or early 2025 while serving with the country’s foreign legion.

He was tried in a Russian-controlled court in the city of Donetsk, which is currently occupied by Moscow.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said it strongly condemned the sentencing of Mr Davies “on false charges”, adding he was a prisoner of war.

It said: “We remain in close contact with Mr Davies’ family and are providing consular support.”

The FCDO said that under international law, prisoners of war cannot be prosecuted for participating in hostilities.

It added: “We demand that Russia respect these obligations, including those under the Geneva Conventions, and stop using prisoners of war for political and propaganda purposes.”

In a statement, Russian prosecutors said Mr Davies joined the Ukrainian army in August 2024 and “took part in military operations against the Russian armed forces on the territory of [Donetsk Region]”.

In court footage released by prosecutors, a man with a British accent speaks via a translator from inside a barred cage, which is standard practice for many Russian hearings.

The man said he was a member of the Ukrainian Army’s foreign legion and travelled to Ukraine by bus via Poland.

He said he was paid $400 (£300) or $500 a month as a salary. When asked if he pleaded guilty to the charge, the man said “yeah” and nodded his head.

It is not clear whether he was speaking under duress.

Earlier this year, the FCDO also criticised the case brought against James Anderson, another Briton captured fighting with Ukraine forces, after he was jailed for 19 years for terrorism and mercenary activity.

The 22-year-old was the first British national to be convicted by Russia during the war.

These are the key developments from day 1,392 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, December 17:

Fighting

• Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital and warned people to stay in shelters late on Tuesday night as air defences worked to repel a Russian attack.
• Russian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, targeting energy infrastructure and causing electricity blackouts, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said on Telegram late on Tuesday night.
• Power outages were also reported in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk said.
• A Russian attack on electrical substations and other energy infrastructure left 280,000 households in Ukraine’s Odesa region without power, Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram.
• Electricity was later restored to 220,000 homes, Kiper said, but extensive work was still needed to repair damaged networks.

• The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is currently receiving electricity through only one of two external power lines, the facility’s Russian management said, after the other line was disconnected due to military activity.

• Russian forces shot down 180 Ukrainian drones in one day, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
• The ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, told TASS that Ukrainian attacks had killed 14 Russian civilians and injured nearly 70, including in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine, over the past week.

Ceasefire talks

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shared details about a potential European-led multinational force being considered as part of discussions on security guarantees for Ukraine.
• “We would secure a demilitarised zone between the warring parties and, to be very specific, we would also act against corresponding Russian incursions and attacks,” Merz told ZDF public television, adding that the talks “we’re not there yet”.

Regional security

• Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden said in a joint statement on Tuesday that “Russia is the most significant, direct and long-term threat to our security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”.
• After the Eastern Flank Summit in Helsinki, Finland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the grouping of European countries discussed an “anti-drone wall” that would require “billions in expenditure here”.
• Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence said that it ended the deployment to Poland of its Patriot systems and soldiers from its Air and Missile Defence Task Force, after the mission concluded as planned.
• UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey said the United Kingdom is spending 600 million pounds (more than $800 million) to buy “thousands of air defence systems, missiles, and automated turrets to shoot down drones” for Ukraine, during a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told the same meeting that Germany would “transfer a significant number of AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles” to Ukraine next year.

Reparations

• The leaders of 34 European countries signed an agreement in The Hague to create an International Claims Commission for Ukraine to seek compensation for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks.
• “Every Russian war crime must have consequences for those who committed them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said before signing the agreement.
• “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia. It will really have to be paid by Russia,” Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs  David van Weel said.

Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) said it carried out the first-ever uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) attack on a Russian vessel. The strike was on a Project 636 Varshavyanka class, or Improved Kilo class diesel-electric submarine, in the Black Sea naval stronghold of Novorossiysk. It would mark a historic first successful use of a UUV as an anti-ship attack weapon.

The SBU released a video it says shows the submarine docked at Novorossiysk along with several other ships. The video pans from right to left and at about the 16-second mark, the submarine erupts in an explosion. That means the UUV, which is not visible in the video, was able to navigate a packed harbor to strike a specific vessel. While we cannot independently verify the SBU claim about the use of a UUV in the strike, they did confirm that assertion to us directly.

Russia, meanwhile, denies any damage was caused by the attack.

‘The information disseminated by special services of Ukraine about the alleged ‘destruction’ of one of the Russian submarines in the bay of the Black Sea Fleet’s Novorossiysk naval base does not correspond to reality,” the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claimed on Telegram. “Not a single ship or submarine as well as the crews of the Black Sea Fleet stationed in the bay of the Novorossiysk naval base were damaged as a result of the sabotage. The watercraft serve normally.”

Today’s UUV attack appears to be the culmination of Ukraine’s development of these weapons and once again shows that the war-torn country is at the forefront of modern drone warfare innovation. Little is known about the Sub Sea Baby UUV, not to be confused with the highly adaptable Sea Baby uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) that have wreaked havoc on the Russian Navy.

Ukraine is developing several UUVs, at least that we know of. It released images in September 2023 of a UUV dubbed Marichka, designed to launch kamikaze attacks against ships and maritime infrastructure. That followed the announcement earlier that year of another UUV known as Toloka, which you can see in the following video.

Автономний підводний дрон TOLOKA

Being able to operate underwater not only helps greatly in avoiding detection and destruction, but it can also potentially mitigate some defensive barriers Russia has already built around ports as a result of Ukraine’s uncrewed surface vessel (USV) campaign. This onslaught has already kept Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (BSF) at bay, forcing it to retreat from Crimea to Novorossiysk. Ukrainian USVs have also damaged enemy military facilities in occupied Crimea and the Kerch Bridge, You can see one Ukrainian USV being destroyed below.

Russian Defense Ministry announced that Ukraine attempted to attack the Ivan Khurs signals intelligence ship of the Russian Navy with 3 unmanned surface vessels (USVs) in the Black Sea this morning.

Moscow released footage allegedly showing the destruction of one of the USVs. pic.twitter.com/YfS7xWSGWw

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) May 24, 2023

The U.S., China and many other nations are developing their own UUVs for missions like the one that struck the Improved Kilo class submarines. UUVs can provide the ability to strike vessels and other targets at long distances and can be launched from submarines and motherships, extending their range. They can also be used for reconnaissance and mine laying, among other duties. You can read more about these vessels in our catalogue of stories here.

In the case of the Improved Kilo class boat, “the vessel suffered critical damage and was effectively put out of action,” the SBU claimed. “On board the submarine were four launchers for ‘Kalibr’ cruise missiles, which the enemy uses to strike at the territory of Ukraine.”

The submarine damaged by the Sea Baby UUVs is one of six Improved Kilo class boats that were operated by the Russian Black Sea Fleet, a retired Russian Navy officer who uses the @Capt_Navy X handle told The War Zone.

These submarines are quite capable and can be very hard to detect when dived and running on battery power. These submarines carry Kalibr long-range cruise missiles that have frequently been used to attack Ukraine.

The Sub Sea Baby UUV attack “was a joint operation of the 13th Main Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of the SBU and the Naval Forces of Ukraine,” SBU explained, adding that the estimated cost of one of the Russian submarines is about $400 million.

This incident also marks the second time an Improved Kilo class submarine in Crimea was attacked by Ukraine. In September 2023, the Rostov-on-Don was severely damaged during a combined missile and uncrewed surface vessel (USV) attack on Sevastopol. Ukraine later claimed it was destroyed. You can see the damage to that submarine below.

If today’s attack did damage the submarine significantly, Russia would be left with four examples operating as part of the Black Sea Fleet.

While much about the Sub Sea Baby UUVs remains a mystery, a proven ability to use them as weapons holds Russian vessels at even greater risk. Novorossiysk was seen as something as a relative safe haven for the Black Sea Fleet, although aerial and sea drone attacks have occurred there. But the idea that Ukraine can use underwater drones to strike ships in port there changes this calculus, if that is indeed the true method of the attack. As a result, we will also be seeing a change in Russia’s defensive posture at the sprawling port located on the northeastern edge of the Black Sea.

At the same time, if this attack was executed by a UUV, it would be another world first and is likely a harbinger of things to come. Hitting ships in port over great distances via underwater drone attack is an asymmetric capability. It’s also one that America’s adversaries are investing in heavily, and especially China.

With all this in mind, the attack on the submarine serves as another reminder that the war in Ukraine has become a conflict where theory and development are put into practice.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

These are the key developments from day 1,391 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, December 16:

Fighting

• A Russian drone attack killed a 62-year-old Ukrainian man as he was riding a bicycle in the Velyka Pysarivka community of Ukraine’s Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
• Russian forces launched 850 attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring 14 people and damaging houses, cars and infrastructure, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
• Russian forces injured five people in attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, and six people in the Kherson region in the past day, local officials said, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
• In Dnipropetrovsk, those injured included a firefighter and factory worker, hurt after Russian forces launched a second attack on a factory in the Synelnykivskyi district, as rescuers tried to respond to a fire caused by an earlier Russian attack, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported on its website.
• Russian attacks caused power outages in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as well as the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, the Ukrainian energy company NPC Ukrenergo said on Facebook.
• Ukraine claimed that underwater drones had, for the first time in the war, struck a Russian submarine docked in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
• The head of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet press service, Aleksei Rulyov, denied that the underwater drone attack was successful. “Not a single ship or submarine of the Black Sea Fleet located at the base in Novorossiysk Bay was damaged,” he said. “The enemy’s attempt at sabotage through underwater drones failed to achieve its aims.”

Ceasefire talks

• US President Donald Trump said a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine was “closer than ever” after American, Ukrainian, European and NATO leaders met in Berlin for hours of talks on a potential settlement, hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
• European leaders issued a joint statement after the talks, saying that any decisions on potential Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia can only be made by the people of Ukraine, and once robust security guarantees are in place for Kyiv.
• They also said that US and European leaders had agreed to “work together to provide robust security guarantees”, including a European-led “multinational force” made up of nations willing to assist “in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine”.
• Speaking at a news conference after the talks, Merz said that the US had offered “considerable” security guarantees, and that although there is now a “chance for a real peace process”, “territorial settlement remains a key question”.

Regional security

• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov called “the EU’s aggressive actions the main threat in the world at the moment”, and claimed that the US is trying to put Europe “in its place”, in an interview with Iranian state television.
• Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, suffered a major email outage. Officials told UK newspaper The Financial Times that they suspect it was a cyberattack, while the Ukraine ceasefire talks were taking place in Berlin.
• Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the new head of the UK’s armed forces, has called for “national resilience” in the face of a “growing” risk from Russia. “It means more people being ready to fight for their country,” Knighton said of the threat from Moscow, while also referring to recent comments from his French counterpart, Fabien Mandon, who said France must be ready to “lose its children”.

US President Donald Trump has said that an agreement to end Russia’s war on Ukraine is “closer than ever” after key leaders held talks in Berlin, but several officials said that significant differences remain over territorial issues.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that he had “very long and very good talks” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and NATO.

“We’re having tremendous support from European leaders. They want to get it [the war] ended also,” he said.

“We had numerous conversations with President [Vladimir] Putin of Russia, and I think we’re closer now than we have been, ever, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Zelenskyy had earlier said that negotiations with US and European leaders were difficult but productive.

The high-level discussions, involving Zelenskyy, a US delegation led by envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and European leaders, took place in Berlin over two days amid mounting pressure from Washington for Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow to end one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts since World War II.

In a statement following the talks, European leaders said they and the US were committed to working together to provide “robust security guarantees” to Ukraine, including a European-led “multinational force Ukraine” supported by the US.

They said the force’s work would include “operating inside Ukraine” as well as assisting in rebuilding Ukraine’s forces, securing its skies and supporting safer seas. They said that Ukrainian forces should remain at a peacetime level of 800,000.

Two US officials, speaking to the Reuters news agency, described the proposed protections as “Article 5-like”, a reference to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence pledge.

Ukraine had earlier signalled it may be willing to abandon its ambition to join the NATO military alliance in exchange for firm Western security guarantees.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Zelenskyy said that Kyiv needed a clear understanding of the security guarantees on offer before making any decisions on territorial control under a potential peace settlement. He added that any guarantees must include effective ceasefire monitoring.

Ukrainian officials have been cautious about what form such guarantees could take. Ukraine received security assurances backed by the US and Europe after gaining independence in 1991, but those did not prevent Russia’s invasions in 2014 and 2022.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Washington had offered “considerable” security guarantees during the Berlin talks.

“What the US has placed on the table here in Berlin, in terms of legal and material guarantees, is really considerable,” Merz said at a joint news conference with Zelenskyy.

“We now have the chance for a real peace process,” he said, adding that territorial arrangements remain a central issue. “Only Ukraine can decide about territorial concessions. No ifs or buts.”

Merz also said it was essential for the European Union to reach an agreement on using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine to demonstrate to Moscow that continuing the war is futile. He warned that EU members must share the risks involved in appropriating those assets, or risk damaging the bloc’s reputation.

Meanwhile, the EU has adopted new sanctions targeting companies and individuals accused of helping Russia circumvent Western restrictions on oil exports that help finance the war.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin was “open to peace and serious decisions” but opposed to what he described as “temporary respites and subterfuges”.

Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said the outcome of the talks remains unclear.

“We know American emissaries were speaking to Ukrainians here in Berlin yesterday and today. Talks between those two groups have finished, according to a statement by Zelenskyy’s office,” Kane said.

“What we don’t yet know is how much of the US-led 28-point plan – parts of which were acceptable to Moscow but strongly opposed by Kyiv and EU officials – remains intact.”

Kane added that the German government has presented a separate 10-point proposal focused on military and intelligence cooperation rather than a peace settlement. European leaders are expected to continue discussions on the remaining areas of disagreement.

Fighting continues

Meanwhile, Ukraine said on Monday that Russia launched 153 drones overnight, with 17 striking their targets.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Kyiv said its underwater drones struck a Russian submarine docked at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Ukraine has stepped up naval attacks in recent weeks on what it has described as Russia-linked vessels in the Black Sea.

Russian forces have continued to target the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, with two Turkish cargo ships hit in recent days. Kyiv said the strikes were aimed at Russian targets.

Zelenskyy also accused Moscow of using its attacks as leverage in peace negotiations.

He said Russia has struck every power station in Ukraine as part of its campaign against the country’s energy infrastructure.

This week is shaping up to be crucial for the European Union’s policy on Ukraine. EU foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday; EU heads of state will gather on Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting United States envoy Steve Witkoff. At the top of the agenda is the peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump and continuing funding for Ukraine’s war effort.

The European strategy so far has been to alter the US-proposed peace plan in such a way that it becomes completely unacceptable to Russia. This, as European leaders hope, will reinforce the core narrative emanating from their capitals over the past two months – that Russian President Vladimir Putin is just playing games and doesn’t really want peace.

The idea behind it is to try to sway Trump to their side and have him apply additional military and economic pressure on the Kremlin rather than pressing Ukraine into signing an unsavoury peace deal right away. But this effort could easily backfire.

The main practical issue with regards to Ukraine’s capacity to withstand Russian aggression during 2026 is who is going to fund its army as well as its state and social welfare system. Trump proudly states that the US is no longer financing Ukraine’s war effort because, in his parlance, it is “Biden’s war” – ie, his predecessor Joe Biden is to blame.

The burden of funding is now squarely on Europe – the EU and rich non-EU countries, such as the United Kingdom and Norway. The US keeps providing weapons to Ukraine, but these are being paid for with money from European coffers. US intelligence support, crucial in Ukraine’s war planning, is currently available to Kyiv for free.

European leaders have been vocal and aggressive throughout the year in rejecting any realistic compromise that could end the war. But even as 2025 is ending, there is no clarity as to how they are going to back up their jingoistic rhetoric with sufficient funding that would allow Ukraine not just to stay afloat but tip the balance in the conflict in its favour.

Their plan A is what they call the reparations loan. It envisages using the assets of the Russian Central Bank frozen by European banks to fund the Ukrainian defence. This means that rather than spending the money on actual reparations – as in Ukraine’s post-war restoration – it would be spent on the war itself.

The thinking behind this plan is that once Russia suffers a strategic defeat, it would retroactively agree to the confiscation rather than demand its money back, so European governments would not have to reach into their coffers to return the money to the Russians.

The obvious problem here is that exactly nobody – except war cheerleaders who have been promising Russia’s defeat for the past four years – believes this outcome is even remotely realistic. Belgium, which holds the bulk of these assets, is equally sceptical, which is why it opposes this plan. It has been joined by a growing number of EU states, including the Czech Republic and Italy.

The other big problem is that Trump’s peace plan has radically different designs for the assets in question. It envisages using them as actual reparations, as in spending them on restoring Ukraine’s economy. Most crucially, Moscow has on numerous occasions signalled that it agrees with this part of the plan. It considers the money lost and wants to make sure neighbouring Ukraine does not turn into a failed state.

This means that if the reparations loan plan goes ahead, it would undermine the most attractive provision of Trump’s plan. If this happens, the US and the EU may find themselves more at odds with each other than they already are, and that would hardly sway Trump.

His administration has indicated on a number of occasions that it could walk out of the peace process if it is derailed, which means ending any help to Ukraine, be it with weapons or intelligence.

The reparations loan plan also comes with an enormous risk for the European economy. The confiscation of Russian assets would discourage any central bank in the world from keeping its money in Europe, meaning the European banking system stands to lose.

More importantly, this move cannot guarantee that Ukraine would be able to stop Russia’s slow but steady advancement. Securing funding for another year under the current circumstances basically means that more Ukrainian lives and territory will be lost in 2026.

This money cannot in effect counter the biggest threat to Ukraine and its neighbours right now: that of Russia precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe that could spill over into the region by devastating Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter. The latest blackout in Odesa when the whole city was left without water and heating in the middle of winter is a dark prelude of things to come.

All this warrants the question of why European leaders are acting the way they are now. Could their irrational radicalism be explained by their extensive political investment in delusional outcomes of this war that they have been selling to voters for the past four years? Or are they engaging in incessant moral posturing so as to avoid being scapegoated for the real outcome of the war?

There is probably a bit of both. But there is perhaps also an even more sinister motive, recently expressed by Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference: the idea that “as long as this war is being fought, … Europe is safe because the Ukrainians have successfully tied down this mighty Russian army.” In other words, there are some within the European political elite who perceive ending the war as being against European interests.

But regardless of what those on top think or are motivated by, the war fatigue in Europe is real. The rise of pro-Russia far-right groups in Germany and elsewhere, capitalising on the ruling elites’ shining ineptitude in handling the conflict with Russia, is a clear sign of that.

If the reparations loan scheme does not pass this week, the EU would have to go to plan B, which envisages loaning money from the EU budget. That, of course, would be met with fierce opposition from the European public.

The failure to secure funding for Ukraine may be seen as an embarrassing failure in Europe, but it would make things easier for Zelenskyy. With his administration losing popularity amid continuing military upsets and a major corruption scandal, Ukraine’s president is well on his way to becoming the chief scapegoat in this debacle.

But no more funding from Europe would allow him to declare that the West has betrayed Ukraine and proceed with the inevitable: accepting an unsavoury peace largely on Russia’s terms.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.